


lethe

by jinlian



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 10:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlian/pseuds/jinlian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lyrium burned under his flesh is a constant reminder that pain once made him forget, but this time pain will be what he remembers. (Fenris-centric)</p>
            </blockquote>





	lethe

**Author's Note:**

> lethe (n) - a river in the Greek underworld that, when drunk from, made souls forget the sufferings of life; oblivion or something to make you enter oblivion and forget

The mansion reeks.

Isabela does not hesitate to announce this when she visits, her nose and lips twisted and her eyebrows raised as though she plans to ask, _Well, what are you going to do about it?_ Fenris ignores these announcements and pours another bottle of wine; his home now (or what passes for it) smells just how he wants it, of piss and dead bodies and alcohol and stale air. He mentions once to her that the aroma seems to have fermented quite nicely; Fenris wonders then if it’s even possible for eyebrows to rise that high on a human.

The smell isn’t _nice, _despite his remarks and lack of any effort to clean the place, but it is what he _wants._ First it was easy—surely Danarius would hear of his presence and arrive soon enough and then, whatever happened, Fenris would move on. But months pass, and then a year, and then three, and Fenris realises he has fallen into a pattern: he knows the house and the streets, he knows the low town of Kirkwall and he knows who were his companions and he knows the woman to whom he owes a debt. Kirkwall becomes a habit and and a place, and that more than anything is something Fenris does not and cannot have.__

__It’s a reminder, then, the run-down state of the mansion Hawke and Aveline call _his._ It’s a reminder that he waits and a reminder for what he waits, even more so than the daily sting of the lyrium across his arms and neck, crawling into his veins and pounding, pounding, always through his blood, because that is something Fenris always has known and always will. And sometimes, when he realises that he will never understand how it feels even to know his own skin, Fenris tries another way to wash away his own reminders that this time it’s pain to which he grips for himself, and he smashes another drained bottle in the corner and watches the last drops of wine drip slowly through the stones._ _

__The worst comes when Fenris thinks maybe, after three years, he can own himself. He leaves the rotting mansion for the bright, warm one instead, where he is met with soft words and soft touches and the embrace of a woman he wants, and who in turn wants him not for what he is but who he is. And for a moment he forgets what it is to hide, what it is to obey, and he forgets so well that a life before it rises and brings everything crashing back in one wonderful, horrible rush of memory. It is not for him to forget, and as lyrium burns it reminds him that he does not have a life without pain. Pain is to _remember,_ to cling and drive him forwards, and if he cannot own that, then he owns nothing at all._ _

__That night, certainly, he never forgets. He thinks of a touch, intimate in a manner so gentle it was foreign, traced hot over the pulse of his tattoos. He thinks of lips, brushed so light against his own and the veins in his neck that strain against his skin as he swallows. Fenris keeps the memory invisible on his skin, and he keeps it tied loose around his wrist—just snatched from her bedstand during that night, lazily tied around his forearm as she dozed off against his chest. _“A lady’s favour,”_ she had said with just a quirk of her mouth, the slow rhythm of his heart beneath her cheek. It’s both his best and worst memory, that one, for the tide that ripped him away from the warmth of her touch and washed him back to the death and waiting that is his shore._ _

__And years later Fenris learns what it is to be _numb._ He learns what it is to hold the heart of a man who gave him a purpose and crush it. He learns what it is to look into the eyes of his sister and snap her neck. He learns that suddenly when there is nothing, he finds something else to which to cling, the voice that promises _"I am here"_ and _"that is yours."_ It becomes a new drink—not smashed in the corner but tangled in sheets and skin, gasping for breath when he rests his head on her shoulder and curls his fingers into her skin._ _

__He cares, suddenly, not at all about remembrance._ _


End file.
